Senior Director, Media

Walgreens • Deerfield, IL

3d • Onsite

About The Position

The Senior Director, Media serves as the enterprise leader responsible for Walgreens' paid media strategy, planning, investment, and performance. Reporting to the SVP, Marketing, this role leads the development and optimization of integrated, full-funnel media strategies that align business objectives, customer insights, and marketing priorities to drive measurable growth, brand impact, and return on investment. Working in close partnership with Brand & Integrated Marketing, Customer Insights & Research, and Measurement & Analytics, this leader ensures media investments are strategically aligned, consumer-centric, and performance-driven. The Senior Director oversees the development and execution of paid media strategies across all channels, including television, video, digital, social, influencer, affiliate, paid search, out-of-home (OOH), and emerging AI-powered platforms. This role leads and maximizes the effectiveness of media agency partnerships while also cultivating relationships with external media partners, platforms, publishers, and industry leaders to identify innovation opportunities and advance Walgreens' media capabilities. The Senior Director is accountable for optimizing media mix, investment allocation, and channel performance to improve marketing effectiveness and business outcomes. As the head of media, this leader plays a critical role in accelerating Walgreens' social and influencer marketing capabilities, advancing measurement and attribution practices, strengthening media operations and governance, and building a high-performing team that delivers both short-term results and long-term brand growth.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree and at least 10 years of digital advertising or marketing experience OR High School/GED and at least 12 years of digital advertising or marketing experience.
• Experience with Media Planning and Buying, particularly in digital media channels.
• Experience with key Ad Tech platforms such as AdWords, Google Analytics, Demand Side Platforms (DSP), and Data Management Platforms (DMPs)
• Experience with in-store traffic generation (e.g. click to brick marketing) and brand building techniques using Search, Affiliate, Social, and Programmatic (e.g. Targeting, content and creatives for programmatic and Social, SEO and SEM).
• Experience managing projects (for example: planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives) and collaborating across multiple agile teams with fragmented priorities.
• At least 5 years of experience contributing to financial decisions in the workplace.
• At least 5 years of direct leadership, indirect leadership and/or cross-functional team leadership.
• Willing to travel up to 10% of the time for business purposes (within state and out of state).

Nice To Haves

• MBA preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in media strategy, planning, buying, performance marketing, or integrated marketing.
• Deep expertise across full-funnel media strategy, investment management, media buying, optimization, measurement, attribution, and ROI management.
• Proven success leading large-scale, integrated media programs for retail, consumer, healthcare, omnichannel, and/or agency organizations.
• Strong experience across television, video, digital media, social media, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, paid search, OOH, and emerging AI-enabled marketing platforms.
• Demonstrated success managing significant media investments and delivering measurable business and brand outcomes.
• Experience leading media agencies and partnering with external media partners, publishers, platforms, and industry organizations.
• Strong analytical and strategic thinking capabilities with the ability to translate customer insights, business priorities, and performance data into actionable media strategies.
• Proven ability to optimize media mix and investment strategies to drive marketing effectiveness and business growth.
• Demonstrated success building, leading, and developing high-performing teams and organizational capabilities.
• Excellent communication, influence, negotiation, and executive stakeholder management skills.
• Agency experience and retail and/or brand-side media leadership experience strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Orchestrates the end to end media strategy, planning and execution process with Walgreens across core marketing pillars (eg: Retail, Pharmacy, Healthcare, Community) and ensures effective collaboration with the corresponding cross functional teams (eg: Brand, Creative, Loyalty)
• Collaborates with the executive leadership team to ensure that the most effective channel mix is implemented at all times.
• Continually drives innovation using a test and learn mentality in those channels and delivering consistent optimization across channels to maximize performance
• Delivers clear strategic roles and priorities of media tactics upper, middle, lower funnel relative to investment level and working with cross functional Analytics partners to create consistent measurement/KPI frameworks for each (eg: performance/conversion, awareness, relevancy/consideration, etc.…)
• Responsible for in market media performance, including oversight of in house and off shore media activation capabilities across digital channels: Search, Social, Affiliate, and Programmatic
• Oversees media audience and data strategy to maximize use of Walgreens 1st party data in order to both create a seamless customer experience and sharpen tie to traffic/sales (digital and in store)
• Collaborates with agency, publisher, and ad tech partners to achieve goals and drive gains on KPIs for both marketing efficiency (reducing sub optimal ad spend) and effectiveness (growing awareness, traffic, and sales contribution for the same spend).
• Ensures holistic customer experience is core to short and long term media plan strategies including across owned digital channels and plan executions are delivering against digital marketing best practices and advanced industry learning driving towards best in class digital engagement
• Champions and co owns the learning agenda and evolving set of playbooks that document best practices from day to day operations, pilots and partners in order to achieve continual marketing performance gains.
• Integrates the learning agenda into media plans by translating high level goals with discrete activation of test and learn pilots to continually improve media execution.
• Drives accountability for growth and optimization of consumer awareness, market share and/or specified initiatives.
• Reviews the competitive marketplace and makes adjustments to activities based upon identified information.
• Oversees and directs the work of direct reports and their subordinates.
• Obtains and allocates resources to meet business needs.
• Ensures the ongoing training and development of direct reports.
• Develops and mentors staff through on boarding, open communication, training and development opportunities and performance management processes; builds and maintains employee morale and engagement; ensures the team is appropriately staffed with required competencies; fosters a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Benefits

• To review benefits, please click here jobs.walgreens.com/benefits. If you are applying on a job board or unable to click on the link, please copy and paste this URL into your browser jobs.walgreens.com/bene

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior